


Despair: Of His Bones Are Coral Made

by FayJay



Series: Endless Days [2]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean, The Sandman
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-04
Updated: 2009-05-04
Packaged: 2017-10-02 09:03:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FayJay/pseuds/FayJay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>in which Cutler Beckett discovers that there are worse things than death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Despair: Of His Bones Are Coral Made

He does not know how long it has been since he was flung into the stinging ocean, his wig aflame and his face an agony of crisping, blackened skin. There are no clocks or calendars at the bottom of the sea, and he has always relied upon these neat, man-made divisions to measure out his days. Bereft of them, he is in limbo, unable to guess whether he has been trapped for a week, a month or a year. It feels like centuries already, but he is terrified that it may only have been days.

Beckett remembers the moment when his world began to unravel around him: it was when he understood that the Dutchman was turning. In that crystalline instant he saw that the vessel had shed its macabre skin and become something new, something unexpected and uncontrolled. He knew that his man had failed him, then, and that all the forces arrayed behind him, all the pride of His Majesty's Royal Navy, would avail him nothing at all as his enemies surrounded him and pointed their guns at the broad sides of the Endeavour. There were voices, questions, screams, shattered wood and a mighty conflagration as the Endeavour was torn asunder, but Beckett had paid the chaos no heed. He was listening to a woman's laughter, an impossibly vast and cruel sound that filled the whole universe. And he was thinking of Jack Sparrow.

He remembers the bruising impact when his body slapped into the surface of the sea; remembers sinking, his fine clothes heavy as lead; remembers choking on salt water as it surged into his nostrils and lungs, and the horrible softness of the flag brushing against his fingertips as he sank down to what should have been his death.

But it was _not_ his death.

The palace is built of shipwrecks and coral, and within it he knows he is safe. If he leaves it, her creatures will devour him. She told him this, smiling, when he first awoke to his new existence, and to illustrate the point, she took him out to meet them. It is dark down here at the bottom of the ocean, unendingly murky and dark. Still, his altered eyes revealed their shapes to him with clarity enough, and he tried to scream as they glided around him, sleek and swift and ravenous. It is water in his throat and in his lungs now, instead of air, water pressing against the strange new flatness of his ears, and though he opened his mouth very wide and felt his diaphragm vibrate, still his scream was silent. He clung to her like an infant, shrinking away from the sharp teeth and the black eyes of her terrible pets, and she laughed and laughed as she dragged him back to his unlocked prison and left him there.

"Why?" he had asked, or tried to ask. The sounds were swallowed by the sea, but he knew that she heard the question. Her smile was terrifying.

"Because you treat the man I love like him a mongrel cur. Because you think you could enslave me. Because it please me. Because I can." And she left him shivering in the tattered palace, peering out through the portholes at the dark shapes that circled his prison hungrily. He has not seen her since.

This is the woman Davey Jones had loved, this terrible creature who has saved his life and trapped him in a nightmare. Cutler Beckett had once called her a "person," in the tone of voice one might use of a pox-raddled doxy begging for pennies. The memory makes him reel at the sheer scale of his folly.

If he were braver, he would leave the shelter of the palace and let them have him. It is the only escape open to him - but he lacks the physical courage.

Instead Beckett prowls around the interior of the mangled vessels and explores the coral caves, looking for a mirror and picking at his memories as a child might pluck at a scab. No shafts of sunlight reach these depths, but his new eyes work well enough to see clearly in the light of strangely glowing creatures and luminous weeds. He eels his way through watery rooms filled with glittering fish that dart and shift around him in panicked swarms; through rooms where tarnished candlesticks and rotting books bob gently past; through rooms where shy cephalapods squirm into pots and pans and kettles, squirting nervous clouds of ink out behind them; through rooms piled high with gold and silver and strings of pearls. Occasionally he happens across a grinning skeleton, sometimes at the centre of a cloud of scavengers nibbling at the rags of flesh still hanging on its bones.

Eventually, he grows hungry enough to nibble at the slimy weeds that wave sinously around him. Later he pries open the shells of oysters and mussels, telling himself that it is nothing he has not done before, surrounded by fresh linen and good silver. He is still a civilized man.

The first time he sinks his teeth into the flailing silver of a living fish, he tells himself that men eat fish raw, in the Japans. He is doing what he can to survive. Somebody will be looking for him, and he must survive long enough to be found. Somebody will find him. They must.

He carefully does not think too hard about how they will know he is living, or where to look. He carefully does not ask himself who would care enough to seek him out. He simply concentrates on survival.

He had first learned about survival and power when he was a schoolboy. It was the most important of his lessons, and the one that shaped the course of his life. He was smaller than the other boys, and many were wealthier or of better families – but none could match him for wits, and so Cutler Beckett had endured the clumsy brutality of older boys and richer in the knowledge that one day he would show them all. He had learned which prefects to cozy up to, which masters to flatter, and he had lived through it. Long years later, he did show them all.

Cutler Beckett was a pragmatist. A businessman. He knew in his very marrow that everything has a price, and everyone can be bought. Nobility, honour, aristocracy, love – these were pretty words with no weight. The only real power lay in money. The currency of the land, as he had explained to Elizabeth Swann, was – currency. The immaterial, whether God or monster, was immaterial.

So he had always believed. Now he does not know what to believe. He has become something impossible, something slimy and pitiful and powerless, like the wretches he had disdained aboard the Dutchman. He has gills now, strange fluting flaps of skin he can slide a finger inside. His limbs have grown flat and attenuated, more like flippers than flesh. There are barnacles clustering on his back.

One cannot weep, at the bottom of the sea. Not when one is breathing tears already.

* * * 

The first time he saw Captain Jack Sparrow, he had wanted him. He had felt a warm sensation in the pit of his stomach, a heady glow of desire. Not to bed him, but to break him; Jack Sparrow had not the wit to understand when he was beaten. Even in chains, he was still cheerful. Still talking, still flirting and flattering and throwing out promises, angling for a way out of his predicament. He cut a ridiculous figure, with his gimcrack finery and his precious hat, and Cutler Beckett had found himself amused. Drawn in despite himself.

"There is nothing you might possibly offer me, pirate," he had said when Sparrow finally paused for breath, his tone almost gentle. He waited for realisation to set in, for the onset of despair, but instead Jack Sparrow had leaned closer, his brown eyes calculating, and Beckett had to step back a little to escape the reek of the man's breath.

"Everybody wants something now, don't they, chum?" Sparrow's smile was broad as the horizon. "And I'm a man who knows how to lay his hands on many different kinds of things that another man might want, if you follow."

Beckett had wrinkled his nose. "I am not a devotee of the Greeks, sir." Which was more or less accurate.

"Who's talking about Greece? Running marathons and scoffing hummus and spanakanakananakopita, folks turning into trees and flowers, girls getting themselves in the family way by getting overly familiar with swans – it's all Greek to me, mate. Nah, I'm talking about making dreams come true, aren't I? Granting wishes. If wishes were fishes we'd all go to sea, my old mam used to say. Well, no, not my old mam, but somebody's old mam. Maybe yours? Maybe not yours. But what I'm getting at, Mister Beckett, is that there are uncanny forces in this world. And I know all there is to know about them, savvy?"

"I'm not interested in fisherman's yarns, Sparrow." But he was interested. There was something oddly mesmerising about the man, something larger than life.

"There must be something you want, Mister Beckett. Gold? Fair ladies? Pretty boys? A fancy title? Ah!" And Beckett knew his face had betrayed him, then, just for a moment. "That's it, isn't it? Oh, that's easy as pie! A piece of cake, or other baked goods of your liking. Mr Beckett, if you would just be so kind as to put away that nasty branding iron and let me sail on me merry way, I can get you your high-falootin' title."

Cutler Beckett had never taken kindly to being mocked. "Perhaps it would serve as an example to others of your kind if we keel-hauled you first. A barbaric practice, but one might make an exception, for an exceptional rogue."

"Now now now, Mister Beckett! You don't want to go doing anything hasty!" Sparrow raised his bound hands as if in prayer. "You think I'm taking the piss, don't you sir? No such thing! I have a trinket, Mister Beckett, a shiny little bauble that came from the hand of the Fairy Queen herself. I bartered for it some time back, and I know it to be as honest an object as any unobjectional object ever was. Honestly! Grants a man's wishes, it does. And if that man were to be yourself, and your wish were to be for a title – well, it could make you King of England, if that's your heart's desire."

"I have heard enough." He turned to go.

"Mister Beckett!" Sparrow's voice took on a note of desperation then that Beckett rather liked. It would be very pleasant to watch, when Sparrow finally realised that he could not wriggle out of this fix. Beckett had turned, a small smile playing around the corner of his mouth, and regarded the prisoner with one eyebrow raised. "Perhaps a small demonstration, sir?" said the pirate, for all the world like a shopkeeper. "A trial of its powers, to satisfy you of my honesty?"

Beckett had laughed then. "Mister Sparrow, you are a pirate. We both know the worth of your honesty."

"Captain! It's Captain Sparrow." Ah. That had cut him. How delightful. "And a man can be an honest pirate, a pirate of his word. Go on now, Mister Beckett – what have you to lose? If I'm spinning tales, why you've just to mark me poor forehead with that nasty piece of metal. But if I'm telling you the truth – why, just think about that now, Mister Beckett!"

Somehow, Sparrow honestly believed that he was going to escape. Beckett found himself intrigued enough to go along with this farce, just in order to find out how he deluded himself this was going to happen. "Well then – say I did believe in fairies and ghosties and magical trinkets," he had said, wiggling his fingertips in the air and smiling at the ridiculousness of the notion. "How do you propose to grant my wish, Mister Sparrow?" He watched the pirate flinch slightly at the title, and his smile grew.

"Not me. The ring. The ring grants the wishes. You've only to take the ring, slip it on your finger and wish for something. Just a demonstration, mind. This ring." He waved one grimy finger, and Beckett regarded the huge yellow stone set in tarnished silver with an expression of pronounced disbelief. "Go on, give it a go! Just say 'I wish for a delicious bottle of rum', or, or 'I wish I had a shiny diamond as big as my fist,' or something like that. And mean it. You have to mean it."

Cutler Beckett gave the matter some consideration. He could not for the life of him see how this served to give the pirate any advantage at all – unless perhaps he were simply trying to buy time, in the belief that his friends would rescue him? Either way, there was nothing to be lost by playing along and exposing him as a sham. He slipped the ring gingerly off the pirate's finger and slid it onto his own.

It felt warm to the touch – but that, of course, was because it had been warmed by the other man's flesh. Not for any mystical reasons. "Well?" he said, regarding Sparrow with an ironical expression.

Sparrow waved his bound hands encouragingly. "Go on, mate! Make a wish, test it out!"

"What if I wish you dead?"

Oddly, a look of genuine concern had crossed the pirate's face for a moment, followed by a cozening smile.

"Er – please don't, mate? Just think what a waste of a good wish that would be, when a gun or a sword or the sea herself could do your work for you. Go on, wish to be taller, or to have a bigger, er, gun, or for a bonny lass to arrive in the altogether. Something dramatic, like, to prove that I'm an honest pirate, so you can send me on me way."

"If this ring grants wishes, Mister Sparrow, why did you not wish us all to perdition when you caught sight of us? Why did you not wish yourself magically away to Tortuga?" He had the man there.

"Ah, well, there's something in the nature of a small catch," said Sparrow. "But only a very small small catch, more of a cat, or a ca, or even a c. See, you can only use it three times. Three wishes per person. Fairies are a tricksy bunch."

Beckett waited, but that, apparently, was that. "So you maintain that if I wish for something, it will happen? As simple as that?"

"That's the ticket. Now commence with the wishing and the freeing, why don't you? A dukedom is only a breath away."

"Very well." He conjured up an image in his mind and concentrated on it, his lips curving into a smile at his own folly. To listen to the man, one might almost believe in the impossible. "I wish I had a bowl of fresh Kentish strawberries and good Devon cream, sprinkled with sugar. And a silver spoon. My my. How very surprising. A dearth of strawberries. Now, back to the little matter of branding you as a - "

"Behind you."

"I'm sorry?"

"They're on the table behind you, mate. Tasty they look, too. I don't know that I've ever ate a strawberry. Why do they call 'em strawberries, do you suppose? They aren't yellow. Silly, that."

So that was his game. It was a disappointingly simple ruse. Beckett felt slightly cheated. "Do you honestly think me foolish enough to turn my back on you?"

"Suit yourself, mate. But if you're not having them, can I? Condemned man's last meal, and all that?" Sparrow sidled around, leaving plenty of space between them, and Beckett turned to watch him.

There was a small china bowl on the table where no bowl had been before, containing the ripest, sweetest-looking strawberries Cutler Beckett had ever seen, glinting with a sprinkling of sugar crystals. And a great blob of cream. And a silver spoon.

He staggered, actually staggered where he stood. His fingers closed on the back of a chair, and without the support he might well have fallen.

Jack Sparrow picked up the spoon, raised his bound hands and took a great mouthful of fruit. He closed his black-rimmed eyes, an expression of delight on his face.

Cutler Beckett sat down, hard.

"Good choice, Mister Beckett! I mean, I'd have asked for a bottle of rum meself, but these strawberries of yours are quite the delicacy. Be even better with a splash of rum, mind." He dropped the spoon back into the bowl. Beckett noticed that there was now a smear of clotted cream on his moustache. "So do we have a deal, then?"

"I wish for a title. To be a lord," said Cutler Beckett, when he finally found his tongue. He glanced around him, half expecting the King to appear and knight him where he stood.

"I expect you'll be getting some pleasant news shortly, then," said Sparrow. "And for your third wish?"

"I wish," began Beckett, and then he paused. There had been a muffled urgency in Sparrow's tone just then, a new note that he had caught even as his head was whirling with a host of new possibilities. He looked at the pirate. There was something there, something unspoken. "No." Beckett eased the ring off his finger and slid it into his pocket, watching Jack Sparrow's face fall. "No, I am content for now."

"You've got to strike while the iron is hot, though! What about riches? Riches is good – you could have a king's ransom! Or wenches, or pretty boys? Or both?"

That decided him. "No."

Jack Sparrow's shoulders sagged slightly, but his voice remained cheerful. "Ah well, your choice, your choice. So this will be the part where you set me free and send me on me way, then?"

Cutler Beckett rose slowly from his chair, strolled over to the brazier and plucked the branding iron free. It cast a ruddy light over his face as he turned to Sparrow, smiling coolly.

"No, Mister Sparrow. This is the part where I press this smoking metal into your skin as many times as it takes to make you tell me why you so badly want me to make that third wish."

"What? No! No, you don't understand, I'm just happy for you, that's all, and innocent as a lamb, a happy little lambkin what doesn't get its precious skin all cooked and crisped and served up with mint sauce. A lamb in a field. Gamboling, quite possibly, and playing with daisies and butterflies." He was backing away as he spoke, his hands out before him as if to fend off the glowing metal or perhaps to entreat some higher power for intervention. "Now, Mister Beckett, is this fair? Is this sportsmanlike behaviour, sir? When I've gifted you with strawberries and knighthoods, all friendly-like?" Beckett stalked closer. Sparrow bumped into a wall, and slid along it until he bumped into another wall. "Really, I don't have the face for branding," he protested. "It'd spoil me distinguished features."

"That, Mister Sparrow, is the point. To make your features more readily distinguished. Tell me what I want to know."

"Now there's no need to – I – oh!"

Beckett did not plunge the branding iron onto the man's face. Yet. He grabbed Sparrow's arm instead and shoved the orange tip hard against the skin.

Sparrow cried out, and the air filled with the savoury smell of cooking meat. "All right! All right! The fairy queen gets to keep you if you make the third wish. They whisk you off to fairy land, all pretty little butterfly wings and tee hee hee and hey nonny nonny. Magical castles and talking mice, everything merry and blythe. That wouldn't be so bad now, would it? It's practically a gift, mate!"

"One that you clearly declined."

"Ah, well, I'm not much of a landlubber. No sea in fairyland. I'd miss the briney."

Beckett had considered this for a moment, then he had lowered the branding iron.

"Out of interest, Sparrow, what did you wish for?"

"Rum," said Jack Sparrow, as if this were the most obvious thing in the world.

"And then?"

"More rum. Course, this was back when I had the Pearl. Kind of a shame I didn't think to save a wish for a rainy day, but I've never been much good at planning ahead."

"I see," said Cutler Beckett, and then he called for his guards. There were clearly many things he could learn from Jack Sparrow, and he was certainly not foolish enough to set the man free. He had made no promises.

"These gentlemen will be seeing me back to me ship, I take it?" said Sparrow, hopefully. The vessel in question barely merited the term 'dinghy', but Beckett did not point that out.

"Take him to the brig."

"From where I will shortly be escorted to me ship?"

"I think not."

He never was quite sure how Sparrow made good his escape from the brig. Something about a cleric of the church of England and sea turtles… it had mattered little enough. Beckett was granted his title very soon after, and meanwhile he had had his eyes opened to a whole new realm of possibilities.

And now he is imprisoned in a whole new impossible realm, with no hope of rescue from clerics or sea turtles or piratical acquaintances, while Captain Jack Sparrow is free to sail the ocean to his heart's content and breathe the salt sea air.

 

* * *

 

When he finally finds a mirror in the depths of one of the wrecks, much much later, he does not understand for a very long moment that he is looking at his own reflection. He knows, vaguely, that the small cluster of barnacles had grown into a large cluster, and then perhaps something more like a carapace. He knows that his eyesight has improved, and that the front of his face feels different. He swims past the portholes of his prison with an inhuman ease now, barely glancing out at the hungry shadows circling the palace. He cannot remember when the first tentacle had appeared, only that he has gradually grown accustomed to the sensation of them brushing against his shoulders as he eels his way through the rooms and caverns of his home. The palace has altered him as surely as any oyster ever changed a speck of grit into a pearl, but it has happened so slowly he has long since ceased noticing.

He thinks at first that he is looking at a portrait of Davey Jones. And then something moves in the background, and he understands.

He knows then that there will be no heroic young blacksmith or brave Governor's daughter sailing to the ends of the earth to risk their own necks and rescue Cutler Beckett from the hell of his own making. There will simply be gliding shadows and rooms full of gold, and the taste of raw fish on his tongue. When realisation hits him, he tries to scream again - but all he can hear is the cruel sound of Calypso's laughter bubbling up all around.


End file.
